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Specifying drawing settings

You can set drawing settings to specify snapping, smoothing, and straightening behaviors when you use Flash drawing tools. You can change the tolerance setting for each option, and turn each option off or on. Tolerance settings are relative, depending on the resolution of your computer screen and the current magnification of the scene. By default, each option is turned on and set to Normal tolerance.

To set drawing settings:

  1. Select Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Flash > Preferences (Macintosh) and click the Editing tab.
  2. Under Drawing Settings, select from the following options:

    Connect Lines determines how close the end of a line being drawn must be to an existing line segment before the end point snaps to the nearest point on the other line. The available options are Must Be Close, Normal, and Can Be Distant. This setting also controls horizontal and vertical line recognition—that is, how nearly horizontal or vertical a line must be drawn before Flash makes it exactly horizontal or vertical. When Snap to Objects is turned on, this setting controls how close objects must be to snap to one another.

    Smooth Curves specifies the amount of smoothing applied to curved lines drawn with the Pencil tool when the drawing mode is set to Straighten or Smooth. (Smoother curves are easier to reshape, whereas rougher curves match the original line strokes more closely.) The selections are Off, Rough, Normal, and Smooth.

    Note: You can further smooth existing curved segments using Modify > Shape > Smooth and Modify > Shape > Optimize.

    Recognize Lines defines how nearly straight a line segment drawn with the Pencil tool must be before Flash recognizes it as a straight line and makes it perfectly straight. The selections are Off, Strict, Normal, and Tolerant. If Recognize Lines is off while you draw, you can straighten lines later by selecting one or more line segments and selecting Modify > Shape > Straighten.

    Recognize Shapes controls how precisely you must draw circles, ovals, squares, rectangles, and 90° and 180° arcs for them to be recognized as geometric shapes and redrawn accurately. The options are Off, Strict, Normal, and Tolerant. If Recognize Shapes is off while you draw, you can straighten lines later by selecting one or more shapes (for example, connected line segments) and selecting Modify > Shape > Straighten.

    Click Accuracy specifies how close to an item the pointer must be before Flash recognizes the item. The options are Strict, Normal, and Tolerant.

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